25 Things to Do With Your Money In 2025 Part 2

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about 25 things that you should do with your money in 2025, part two. How Andrew Can Help You: Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest! Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok. Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here. Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Go to joindeleteme.com/pfp20 for 20% off! Go to Acorns.com/pfp and start automating your investments and get a $5 bonus today! Links Mentioned in This Episode: 12 Amazon Scams You Need to Watch Out For! 7 Financial Scams to Watch Out for in 2024 How to Negotiate Your Salary and Get a Raise (The Step-By-Step System!) How to Break The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle (IN 2025) The Bucket Method For Managing Your Savings (Master Multiple Savings Goals) The 1-3-6 Method For Building & Managing Your Emergency Fund How to Skyrocket Your Net Worth By Building an Amazing Network with Jordan Harbinger 5 Steps to Take Immediately If Your Credit Card is Stolen! Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Free Guides: The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money How to Negotiate Your Salary The 75 Day Money Challenge Get out Of Debt Fast Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  Longtime listeners know, one of the best ways to build wealth is to increase your income. And one way to do that is by starting a side hustle. And that's one reason why I absolutely love Whatnot. Now, my son and I, we love collecting sports cards. And we've used Whatnot to buy and sell cards. It's been a really fun way to enjoy something we love together. Now, Whatnot is a live shopping platform where people sell everything from sports cards to clothing, electronics, and collectibles. And what's really cool about it is you can turn something you're passionate about into a business. And you could do it right from your phone. You don't even need a storefront or a website. So whether you're looking to make some extra money or find great deals on your next shopping trip, check out Whatnot.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

  Search Whatnot, that's W H A T N O T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI website builder.

• 1:27Andrew Giancola?

  I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch. Their AI can help with SEO, website copy, email marketing, and more. Plus, your domain, website, email, and marketing can all live in one account, with plans starting at just $3 every single month. Hostinger builds your vision step by step. Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/pfp and use code PFP for 10% off now. 25 Things That You Should Do With Your Money in 2025, Part 2.

• 2:21Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to dive into the second part of 25 things that you need to be doing with your money in 2025. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter and you can ask your question there and follow the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're getting value out of the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and/or subscribing on YouTube. Can I

• 3:04Andrew Giancola?

  thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews? They truly mean the world to us. Now today, I'm going to dive into 25 things to do with your money in 2025. We're going to be going into part two. If you missed part one, go back and listen to part one because we gave you 13 big things that you should be considering in 2025. Now in this second half, we're going to be talking through the next 12 things that you should be doing in 2025. I'm really, really excited for this episode because we have a lot of different actionable tips for you in this episode. Now, if you're listening to some of these podcasts and you're saying to yourself, well, this is a lot of different things I need to be doing. Just remember that

• 3:46Andrew Giancola?

  you do not have to do every single one of these things, but you want to try to make progress towards some of these so that you can improve your financial life. Some of these I will tell you, hey, every single person should be doing these. Those are the ones you should definitely be doing. And some of these you may not have to do every single time, depending on what your personal situation is. Things like adjusting your asset allocation or tax withholdings, those types of things can be situation by situation. So as we dive into this episode, really, really excited for you to go through this. We got a ton of things to cover here. So without further ado, let's get into it.

• 4:20Andrew Giancola?

  So number 14 is to do a lifestyle creep assessment. Now, one thing I want a lot of people to note is how their lifestyle is creeping up over time. Now for me, for example, when I was in my early twenties, I did not spend a lot of money. I was trying to be as frugal as possible and I was taking as many of my extra dollars as I possibly could and trying to invest that money because I wanted to grow my wealth snowball. And I started to push it downhill a little bit. It would grow a little more and a little more and a little more over time. And so as time has gone on, I got married and when I got married, my lifestyle creeped up a little bit. There's two people in the household and so we got to make sure that we are covering all our bases and enjoying life together.

• 5:03Andrew Giancola?

  Then when I started to have kids, my lifestyle really started to creep up a little bit. And so for those of you who are in the stage of life where you have kids, you know, your dollars are going to be spent on very different things than prior to having kids. And so you got to make sure that you are accounting for that and just understanding what is going on here. Because what happens is some people will start to allow their lifestyle to creep up too quickly. And when you allow your lifestyle to creep up too rapidly, then what's going to happen is that you're going to start to live in a paycheck to paycheck cycle. And that is the last thing you want to be doing. So we just need to understand over time, how much our lifestyle is creeping up. Now, I think some lifestyle creep is good, meaning that as your income increases, you should also increase your lifestyle. You should be enjoying your money, you should go on more vacations,

• 5:48Andrew Giancola?

  you should spend more dollars on your health and fitness. You should be spending more dollars on the things that you love in life, the things that bring you value. In fact, I want you to spend as much as you possibly can on those things. But we also want to make sure we are hitting our retirement goals. And if we are not hitting our retirement goals and our lifestyle creep is still increasing, then we need to reevaluate what we are doing with our dollars. And so I want you to try to do a lifestyle creep assessment, if you can, to figure out exactly where you land. Now, we'll do a deeper dive episode on this exact topic. So that if you want a worksheet that helps you kind of go through this, we'll provide that for you during that time. But one, is I want you to review your growth of income over the course of the last five years. Has your income grown?

• 6:31Andrew Giancola?

  And if it has not grown, ask yourself, why has it not grown? Now, if you get a 3% raise and inflation is 8%, then you actually took a pay cut during that specific year. So you got to make sure you understand the inflation rate and how much your income has grown. If you're the person who just accepts the 3% raise every single year, I want you to change that in 2025 and try to be proactive to being involved in projects that actually matter. You heard that on the last episode, we were talking through how to negotiate your salary. Make sure you understand how to work the process. It is very important to be able to do that. So review that income growth. Make sure it is growing year over year. If it's not, why is it not growing? Don't blame somebody else. Instead, look internally and see why is my income not growing?

• 7:14Andrew Giancola?

  Two, compare spending versus income growth. So as you start to look at this, you can even do this on your bank statements. You can pull up 12-month bank statements on a spreadsheet if you don't use any sort of budgeting app. Now, if you use a budgeting app, you can do this really easily and quickly, but compare your spending year over year and see if that spending is going up. Inflation is going to cause your spending to definitely go up. Now, and the inflation rate is not going to be lifestyle creep, it's just the cost of living. And so that's going to be something that's very important to differentiate. But make sure that you are looking at the difference between your spending and your income growth. Did you take on new car payments? Well, that is going to be lifestyle creep and that's going to increase the amount that you're spending every single month. Did you get a new mortgage? Well, your lifestyle creeped up again and that's going to increase the amount that you're spending.

• 7:58Andrew Giancola?

  Did you switch from shopping at Aldi to shopping at Whole Foods and you're only eating organic foods? Well, your lifestyle just creeped up again and that's going to make a big difference in your lifestyle. There's a bunch of different ways on how your lifestyle can creep up and sometimes it's subtle and you have no idea. Maybe you take more shopping trips at Target and you go in for two things and you walk out with 15 things. Maybe your trigger button on that buy now on Amazon is a little too quick to hit buy now. Or maybe you are someone who is just trying to get by and you have more lifestyle things that are happening where you're having more kids, maybe you got married and then all of a sudden you realize, hey, my lifestyle has creeped up very rapidly without me even knowing. So just kind of track the difference between your spending and your income. And then you're going to look at your spending categories.

• 8:41Andrew Giancola?

  Are there anything in there that does not bring you value? Just make sure you are analyzing that. Now, one big thing to note is when you're looking at lifestyle creep, you need to know your savings rate. And if you don't know your savings rate in 2025, that is one of the metrics you absolutely have to know. We have an episode that we had late last year where we talked about the metrics that you need to know in your financial scorecard and how you need to track your savings rate. You need to track your income. You need to track all of these different metrics. And I would highly recommend that episode, if you haven't heard it, to make sure that you are on track and understanding your finances. There are six different numbers that you need to know to track your finances. If you don't know these six numbers, you're not being responsible with your money. I want you to know those six numbers. So making sure you have those is going to be really, really important. So check out that episode if you have not yet.

• 9:26Andrew Giancola?

  And then try to identify why your lifestyle is creeping up. If you don't know why your lifestyle is creeping up, do an evaluation of maybe some of your spending habits and some of the things that may have shifted over time. Are you going to lunch every single day during work? Where before you didn't do that? Are you eating out way more with your family in the evenings? Are you spending more dollars on just other random things? You've just got to figure out exactly where that creep is happening. And then, once you identify that, then you could just monitor it and revisit this regularly. I would do this yearly. I would do a lifestyle creep audit every single year to figure out exactly what's going on. Now, at times, this can also be a very positive message because your lifestyle hasn't creeped up enough. Again, I think lifestyle creep is healthy in some way, shape or form. It should not be the same amount as your raise every single year, though.

• 10:11Andrew Giancola?

  So if you get a raise, maybe 50% goes towards your lifestyle changes and 50% goes towards wealth building every single year. Until you get to the point in time where you are really fast track approaching financial independence, or you know that you're coast fire, meaning that you have enough money saved right now, that if you kind of worked until your retirement age, that you would be able to retire, then you'd be able to increase that lifestyle creep significantly. We have episodes on coast five too. If you haven't heard that, that teaches you exactly how to think about that. Now, if your lifestyle has creeped up too much and now you're living in the paycheck to paycheck cycle, then we need to reassess exactly where that's happening, cut back on some of that stuff if we can. And then in Increase our income if we cannot cut back anymore.

• 10:52Andrew Giancola?

  So making sure we do that lifestyle creep assessment every year is I think something every single person should be doing. Just understanding your money. You want to really be able to understand your money and that lifestyle creep assessment can help you. Number 15 is to take advantage of three paycheck months. Now, this is one of my favorite things to talk about every single year is when the three paycheck months happen. Now, for some of you that are listening here in January in 2025, your three paycheck month is actually January of 2025. So if your first paycheck is January 3rd of 2025, meaning you are which at the time of recording this, it's January 3rd right now. So you're getting paid right now. If that's your first paycheck, then that is going to mean that your three paycheck months are January and August.

• 11:37Andrew Giancola?

  Now, if your first paycheck is January 10th, then your three paycheck months are going to be May and October. So you have a little more time to plan this out. Now, here's what I want you to understand about three paycheck months because we do videos on this on social media. And we start to get a million comments of people saying, I have no idea how this even helps me to understand my three paycheck months. I feel like it all goes to bills. Or some people are like, it does not matter whatsoever. And they are convinced that it does not matter if you have a three paycheck month. Now, let me explain this to you really quick. If you live on the same exact amount of money every single month, meaning you lived on fixed expenses every single month. Where when you get two paychecks in February, you can live on those fixed expenses.

• 12:19Andrew Giancola?

  Where you get two paychecks in March, you can live on those fixed expenses. And you get two paychecks in April, you can live on those fixed expenses. But you get three paychecks in January, even though it's the second, the third paycheck is very close to the first. You will be able to keep one of those paychecks if you budget this accordingly. And for those of you out there who do not live on fixed expenses because you're not tracking your spending. The reason why it all goes to bills is you're not tracking your spending. And a lot of times if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're just using this money to catch up. But if you can figure out how to live on two paychecks every single month, three paycheck months will give you a bonus paycheck that you could put towards. Wealth building activities. Now, what do I mean by wealth building activities?

• 13:02Andrew Giancola?

  That means going towards your retirement accounts, things like your HSA, your Roth IRA, your 401k. You can take these extra dollars and put them towards investments and imagine having two extra paychecks every single month. Maybe you're hitting those retirement goals. You can put that extra paycheck towards debt if you really want to get some of your debt paid down. If you have high interest debt, that's where it should go. If you have low interest debt and you just don't like it, you want to get rid of your car payment, or you want to start to pay down your mortgage a little more, it can go towards those types of things. You can invest it towards your savings goals, meaning you could put it towards your vacation fund, you could put it towards your emergency fund, you could put it towards your wedding fund, your kid's college fund. There's so many different things that you could do with these three paycheck months.

• 13:43Andrew Giancola?

  Knowing when they are and planning for them is the key to making sure you can save these dollars. Okay, it all comes down to planning, which is why I talk about it. And this year, if you're paying on January 3rd, you got to plan it out right now. And if you haven't started planning and you're just spending left and right and you haven't even thought through this, you may lose that first three paycheck month. But guess what? The second one is in August, you have plenty of time to plan that out where you can get that paycheck and then utilize that for wealth building activities. Now again, if your income is very close to the amount that you spend every single month, this is going to be a tight, fine line for you. But you got to make sure that if you plan this out and you live on two paychecks every other month and you get paid bi-weekly, then this works out for you. Now, if you get paid weekly, the numbers are going to

• 14:26Andrew Giancola?

  change. And think about this, if you get paid weekly too, because you're going to have multiple months that will have five paycheck months. I saw a bunch of people, when I posted this on social media, say that they get paid bi-monthly, which I've never even heard of before, but I guess that is possible, maybe your commission basis or something else. That is another situation where you're not going to get those three paycheck months. But depending on your frequency of pay, bi-weekly is what we're talking about here, you may be able to take advantage of those three paycheck months. Now, if you're hitting all your retirement goals, take that extra paycheck and blow it on stuff you love. I don't care. That is going to be absolutely amazing place to do it. I want you to enjoy your money and spend time doing things that you love. And so that is absolutely fantastic. If you're hitting all your retirement goals, you're hitting all your college savings goals.

• 15:09Andrew Giancola?

  You are not worried about specific debt payments. If you do have debt, I would pay that down first. But if not, then more power to you. Fall out if you want to. If you want to make it rain, go ahead and do it. That is one of the best things that you can do with your money is enjoy it. And that's what we want you to do here. And so, learning how to manage your money allows you to enjoy your money so much more. Number 16 is I'm talking to you. I know there's some of you out here who are struggling with holiday debt. Meaning that there's a huge portion of Americans that go into debt every single year when the holidays come around. They either spend it on presents, they spend it on holiday food, they're hosting, and all of a sudden it kind of gets out of control and it spirals out of control. You know that feeling. It starts to feel, if you buy a lot of presents for people,

• 15:51Andrew Giancola?

  you start to kind of feel icky towards the end of December when you're still like buying more presents and you feel like you're just getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole. I understand how that feels, but if you went into debt for the holidays, you went backwards for 2025, meaning you put yourself into a hole in 2025 and your boy's goal is to get you out of that hole. And so, we want to make sure that we get you out of that holiday hole. And then, secondly, we also want to make sure that we start saving for the holidays now. So, anybody listening who was like, "Woo, that was a close call. I almost went into debt in 2024 for the holidays because I did not plan this out." Well, in 2025, I want you to treat the holidays like a bill. Meaning that you're going to set up a category in your high-yield savings account in a bucket

• 16:35Andrew Giancola?

  and you're going to start saving for the holidays now in January. I cannot tell you how important this can be. So, here's how you do that. First, you're going to look at how much you spent in 2024 and you're going to say to yourself, "Well, last year I spent $2,400. I'm using that for easy math. You may have spent way less. I don't care how much you spent. This is an example, people. This is an example." Every time I use an example, people just freak out every single time. This is an example. So, let's say you spent $2,400 last year during the holidays. If you spent $2,400 last year, you divide that number by 12 and guess what? You've got to save $200 per month. But what does this do? This does a number of different things. One is if you see things that you know someone's going to like. Maybe you take notes and you hear people talk about, "Oh, I wish I had..."

• 17:19Andrew Giancola?

  This or I wish I had that. You see things on sale throughout the entire year. You can start to buy things for people. Now, if you have the type of family where everybody tells each other what they want. They don't tell each other until November, you may have to wait. But if you're the type of person who everybody just likes to surprise each other, then you can go out there and start to buy gifts throughout the year and start to check boxes off. Cause you have the cash on hand already. We pay for the holidays in cash here at the personal finance podcast and master money. That's how we do things when it comes to consuming stuff. Okay. And so when it comes to consuming stuff, you need to pay for this in cash. And if you already have the cash on hand, because you're saving $200 per month, because the holidays are a bill. You're going to spend the money no matter what. And so making sure you are already saving for that is really important.

• 18:03Andrew Giancola?

  And you can take advantage of deals early and you could probably spend less money over time. Then imagine getting to the holidays. Okay. And you may have never, ever felt this feeling in your life and your stress around money is lifted. Your stress around money is lifted during the holidays and you could just relax. You can buy the stuff you need to buy. You can buy the groceries you need to buy. You can finally afford that gigantic prime rib because you saved up the money throughout the entire year. Speaking of which, a great prime rib hack around the holidays, remember this for next year, because I did this this year. Side note is if you're like me and you eat a really high protein diet, then you could take a prime rib.

• 18:43Andrew Giancola?

  You could slice that bad boy up. You could do it as thick as you want and you got yourself rib eyes for like $6 a steak when they're usually 20. Amazing hack. Did it this year. I have like 20 rib eyes in my freezer right now. Anyways. So that is something that you need to be doing is saving for the holidays now is going to be something that will reduce your stress in your life. Now, if you have holiday debt, let's get into this because we got to assess how much holiday debt you have. And then I want you to prioritize the high interest debt first. So if you went into credit card debt, if you took a personal loan, make sure you prioritize that high interest debt first. If you did buy now, pay later, don't do that again. A. B. Once you get that paid off, we want to make sure that we are now moving into the next year and ensuring that we are saving up cash overall.

• 19:23Andrew Giancola?

  Buy now, pay later is my enemy. I hate it more than anything, but it's better than going into debt on a credit card if you're paying 0%. An interest on a buy now, pay later. It just depends on what you're paying there. And then create this repayment plan. See how much extra cash you have on hand? That high interest debt needs to be attacked immediately. That is a pants on fire emergency, specifically when it comes to your finances. You want to make sure that you are paying off that high interest debt as fast as you possibly can. If you get windfalls, meaning if you have a bonus coming to you in March, some people get bonuses in January, February, March, earlier in the year. Take that financial windfall, put it towards these different things to make sure that you are paying off some of this stuff. Also, if you have unused items, sell those things as fast as you possibly can. We talked about this in the paycheck to paycheck cycle episode, but if you're in debt, you need to sell unused items,

• 20:08Andrew Giancola?

  every single one of them, and put them towards your debt and try to get rid of that debt and then set up automatic payments towards your debt so that you never miss a payment and ensure that you are paying this down every single month. And then pause any other non-essential spending if you can to get rid of that debt. We want to attack this aggressively in 2025. So if you went into debt, we need to attack this. We need to get rid of it as fast as we possibly can. That is your goal. I don't want you to go into consumer debt ever again, but number one, we need to make sure that we are taking care of this. Now, if you are in debt, if you went into debt, we have a free course for anybody who went into debt. If you go to mastermoney.co/courses, we have a free debt course. I'm never going to charge somebody for a course who is in debt, and I want you to take that course and go through the process.

• 20:50Andrew Giancola?

  It takes you about an hour, pretty simple. Thousands of people have already taken it, and it is one that I think can really, really help you significantly if you are in debt. All right. Number 17 is to create your financial protection plan. Now, your financial protection plan is going to be one of the most important things that you do, especially in the next coming years, because AI is advancing and scams are getting better and better every single year. And so you need to have a financial protection plan in place. We have multiple episodes on how to do this. We have some that encompass the entire way that I do this. I'm going to talk about some ways here, too, but you need to make sure that you are protecting your financial information online. If you don't, someone will be able to get a hold of it at some point in time, and they will be able to use it against you. And the last

• 21:33Andrew Giancola?

  thing I want them to be able to do is have a catastrophic thing happen to you because you did not protect yourself. So, one, Obviously, use strong passwords. Every time I talk about this, people make fun of me. But it is very important to use strong, unique passwords. If you use your dog Waffles name in every single password and the number 74 exclamation point, someone's going to eventually figure that out and they're going to use that against you. So making sure that you have strong, unique passwords is really powerful. One password is a great place to store all your passwords, but it also offers you unique password ideas. And I really like that as a storage option. Another one is Google Chrome has its own tool that also gives you unique storage ideas for your passwords. And it just jumbles a bunch of letters and numbers and figures together to give you passwords and then it just saves them for you.

• 22:16Andrew Giancola?

  That's what you need to be doing for all of your passwords. And I am even guilty of this on some things. I'm like, I want to remember this. I want to remember what the password is. I don't want to jumble this up, but I'm changing that in 2025 only because I need to be more disciplined. Even me, who talks about this all the time, who thinks about this all the time, I need to be more disciplined on those passwords. So making sure, this is just a reminder. I know it's basic, but it's a reminder to make sure you fix up those passwords. Always enable two-factor authentication on all of your stuff. Monitor your accounts regularly. So if you are someone who stresses out about money, I want you to monitor your accounts less than the normal person. But if you're someone who is really thinking about this, at least be monitoring your accounts on a monthly basis to make sure nothing has happened. Also, if you have devices that need antivirus software, shout out to Mac, I don't have any on mine because you don't need it.

• 23:01Andrew Giancola?

  But if you do need it, install that antivirus software to make sure your devices are safe. Be cautious with any email or link. So emails and links are getting a lot better now. It used to be where they would scam, you know, elderly people. They'd click on anything that you're looking at. Listen, I get it. You know, your parents, my parents, some generations will click on any link that they are sent and believe it. But at the same time, now they are getting a lot better where I have seen them disguised as some of your favorite brands. And they look exactly like that brand and they say they have a slightly higher sale than they normally would have. You click on that thing and all of a sudden you have a spam link. I have also seen it where you Google a phone number and you're trying to find a phone number to call customer service for a company and the number one Google listing is actually a spam phone number.

• 23:45Andrew Giancola?

  And all of a sudden you're starting to realize, oh, when they're asking you some weird questions. You're starting to realize that this may not be the company that you're working with. There are a bunch of emails, links, and suspicious items now that sound very real. And with AI, they can use voice assistants that sound literally exactly like a real person, and probably better than a real person would actually handle specific situations. So making sure that you are very cautious is important. Using secure networks, utilizing a VPN, especially in public areas, is also very important. Freezing your credit. So we've had some episodes talking about freezing your credit. It is something now that I think you could do a lot faster. And making sure that you freeze your credit and have a system in place is going to be really important.

• 24:27Andrew Giancola?

  So what you do is you go to Experian, you go to Equifax, and you go to TransUnion, and you freeze your credit when you are not going to use it. When you're not going to open a credit card, when you're not going to open a student loan. And then you unfreeze your credit when you are going to open up a mortgage or go for a car loan. And it really doesn't take as much time as it used to now. So save up just some favorites within your bookmarks, and you can kind of get in there and freeze and unfreeze your credit pretty quickly. They make it a lot easier than it used to be, and I'm so glad they do. Also, enable alerts on your financial accounts. If you don't have alerts on your financial accounts because you don't want to deal with the notifications, I get it, but you need to enable those alerts. Really, really important stuff. Limit personal sharing is going to be a big one. So if websites are asking you for things like your social security number,

• 25:10Andrew Giancola?

  or they're asking you for very specific items, really be cautious about that. Because if somebody gets a hold of that information, you got yourself into a bigger pickle than you need to have. Also, removing your personal information online. Now, my favorite way to remove my personal information online is using a service called DeleteMe. And DeleteMe, what they do is they go to online data brokers, and they go and remove your personal information from these data brokers. If you Google your name, or you Google your phone number, you will see that your information is all over the internet. You can even Google your address in quotations, and you'll see your information is all over the internet. I just had this happen recently. Somebody was trying to find me, and they were trying to find my information. It was a friend that I had a long time ago.

• 25:53Andrew Giancola?

  And they were trying to look me up and find my phone number, or my name, or my information. And they couldn't find me, and they were looking all over the place. Actually found someone close to me their information and tried to get ahold of them to try to find me, but they could not find me because I've been using Delete Me for years and years and years. Whereas it used to be before I started using Delete Me, you could find my information pretty quickly. And now thankfully with Delete Me, they have removed my personal information. And so I'm getting a subscription for my family members now and just trying to help them remove their personal information online. Because if somebody like a scammer gets your personal information and they just get a piece of it, all they need is a piece of it. They can go look up the rest of your information and be able to fill out student loans or different things in your name that you had no idea about.

• 26:36Andrew Giancola?

  So just make sure you remove your personal information online. If you go to joindelete.me/pfp, that's actually a place where you can get 20% off of any of those subscriptions there. One of my favorite services, absolutely love Delete Me, and they have been a partner with this show for a very long time. Now also, you want to make sure that you are using secure payment methods. There is a case, and we may do an entire episode on this, there is a case to be using Apple Pay and electronic payments more so than any other type of payments, even pulling out your credit card and tapping, all of those different new ways to utilize a credit card. There is now more encryption on Apple Pay, Google Pay, those types of things. And this may be a year where I'm going to be talking more about utilizing payments

• 27:19Andrew Giancola?

  that are all electronic. I don't do it now. And so I'm actually going through testing and looking and reading some of the data and the information on this, that I may be switching completely to Apple Pay, Google Pay. I think there was a great episode that just came out on another podcast that I'll link up down below, that was actually talking about this, and it triggered me to kind of think through this. Also, beware of phishing scams. They are happening more and more and more through text messages and a bunch of different other ways. And just make sure you're aware of that. It's the same thing with suspicious links. Backup important data is going to be really important. So when you have important data, maybe you have a will or a trust, or maybe you have important account information. I want you to back that up on an external hard drive if you can, and make sure it's password protected, encrypted, whatever else you need to do. But have that external hard drive. It's worth the investment to back up some of that really important data.

• 28:04Andrew Giancola?

  Maybe life insurance, like term life insurance with Policy Genius, something like that. All that stuff needs to be backed up. So everybody knows where to get that information. Also, secure your social media accounts. I mean, there's no reason for you unless you are trying to run a business through your social media. Make sure you secure those social media accounts so that it's not just open to anyone being able to look at you and find you. Because when they can find your personal information, they can find you, they can use your pictures against you. There's a lot of things that can happen there that you don't want to do. And then make sure you're helping educate your family members. This is a big one that I think most people don't do enough is please try to educate your family members and try to help them with protecting their information. They are most likely, especially your elderly family members, they are targeted more.

• 28:45Andrew Giancola?

  And so making sure that you teach them more about phishing scams, how those types of things work, so that they are aware of this kind of stuff. Even if you can make a little sign by their computer that says, hey, make sure you double check the link. Just to remind them, double check links before you're actually clicking on links. Be very cautious of clicking on links so that they don't get scammed. I have seen some really bad cases where family members have gotten scammed out of their entire savings. And this is not what I want for you and your family. We need to try to help and educate our family members as much as possible. Grandparents or elderly parents, making sure you're talking through this stuff with them. They were not born with the internet, and so this is not natural to them. So just making sure that you have these conversations can be really, really helpful. Number 18, and I am excited about this one because I want you to increase your spending on stuff that you love

• 29:30Andrew Giancola?

  as long as you've hit your retirement goals. Meaning that if you are someone who loves to hoard money and you love to hoard cash and you do not actually spend any money whatsoever on yourself, I want you to increase that spending on yourself a little bit. Let's say, for example, you're someone who loves golf and you have the same old clubs that you've been playing with for the last 12 years because you think eh, they're probably the same as the new ones. And you've said to yourself, man, I wish I could get some new clubs. I just don't want to spend the money on myself. You want to spend the money on other things or you want to make sure that you hoard that cash just in case, even though you've already got a fully funded two-year emergency fund, you're hitting your retirement goals, you're doing all these different things. If you're that type of person where you're just overly frugal, I want you to try, just try it. And maybe it won't make you happier, maybe it makes you happier to hoard your cash.

• 30:14Andrew Giancola?

  But just try to spend a little more on things that you love. Now here's how you do this because some People need to understand that spending is actually a skill and you need to do it cautiously, but you also want to make sure that you are doing it on things that you love. So identify what brings you joy. I want you to kind of write out a list of things that bring you complete joy when it comes to spending money. For me, it's spending money on vacations and specifically, I want you to get really specific. When I spend money on vacations, I want to stay in a nicer hotel. I want travel accommodations to be a little more comfortable and I want to be able to take my entire family. And that's one big thing for me where we have a bunch of activities that we can do throughout that vacation and we are having a really good time. That's one. I want to also on vacation be able to spend as much as I want on food or drinks or anything else that I

• 30:58Andrew Giancola?

  want on that vacation. In addition, I want to be able to not have to think twice about any excursion I want to take or anything like that. So this is how you get really specific on something that you love. Another example for me is the golf example. So I like to play golf a lot. I want to be able to play at any course that I want to. I want to be able to upgrade any club that I want to. And so to be able to do this, you got to plan around it a little bit. You got to make sure that you are planning and thinking through what you need to be doing, what you are interested in. Maybe you love pickleball and you want to get a membership to an indoor pickleball facility, wink, wink. That's going to be another thing that you could enjoy. Or maybe you are someone who loves fitness and you want to spend more money on healthy foods and you don't want to think about your budget on healthy foods. And so you try to make more money so that you can do that. In addition, you also want to have any gym membership in the world. Maybe you want a

• 31:43Andrew Giancola?

  CrossFit membership and you want a traditional gym membership. And maybe you also want a membership to Orange Theory. You just want to have different fitness experiences. And if that's the case, that is amazing. I love that. More power to you. Let's spend a little more on the things we love if we're hitting our retirement goals. Now, if you aren't at the point in time where you're hitting your retirement goals yet, that's okay. But this is your goal, is to be able to have more freedom to spend on the things that you love. And I still want you spending on things that you love, but we want to try to get closer to those retirement goals before we start doing that. Now, making sure when you spend on things that you love, we only want to be using discretionary money. We don't want to be using some of our fixed expenses. We don't want to be using some of our retirement savings, only that discretionary money. But if you can just grow that discretionary

• 32:25Andrew Giancola?

  income, it's going to be really, really cool to see what you can do there. So planning ahead for some of those big purchases and making sure that you think through what actually brings you joy can be really, really valuable. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything, from your accounts and investments to your savings, goals, and spending. So you can see your entire financial picture in one place. One habit that's made a huge difference for me is my five-minute drill every single morning.

• 33:07Andrew Giancola?

  I open Monarch, check my spending, investments, cash flow, and net worth, and I'm done in just a few minutes. It gives me confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks. I also love the AI weekly recap because it'll flag spending changes, upcoming expenses, or shifts in my net worth before they become a problem. Instead of reacting after the fact, I can make adjustments early. It really feels like having a financial advisor in your pocket. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code PFP at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code PFP. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore.

• 33:52Andrew Giancola?

  It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow, I'd want someone who could jump right in and make an impact. That's why I'd use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. When workplace chaos hits, Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you reach qualified candidates faster. Your job gets boosted in search results, so you're spending less time searching and more time interviewing the right people. Plus, you only pay for results, which I absolutely love. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored posts. That's a huge advantage when you're trying to grow your business. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes.

• 34:36Andrew Giancola?

  Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show, We'll get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it

• 35:17Andrew Giancola?

  did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers, side by side, for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just

• 36:02Andrew Giancola?

  $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to policygenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com.

• 36:15Speaker 01

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• 36:41Andrew Giancola?

  All right, up next is to make a will or a trust. Now, deciding between the two is going to be a really important thing. Now, most people out there, even if you're a 20-year-old and you just moved into your first apartment, most people out there need at least a will. A will is something where it just identifies all the stuff that you own, even if you don't own a ton of stuff. It just outlines where your assets need to be distributed. Whereas a trust is actually more so a legal entity that holds your assets during your lifetime and distributes them per your instructions, avoiding probate. And so what you really want to do is avoid probate so your family members don't have to go through this long, lengthy process. And so if you are someone who has over a million dollars' worth of assets, meaning that you are someone who, maybe you own your house and you own a bunch of different real estate, or you own a business,

• 37:25Andrew Giancola?

  or some of those types of things, then a trust is probably a great idea. And you can kind of evaluate that and talk to attorney if you want to, to look into it. I use trust and will, which is not associated with me, but I use trust and will. It's a really fast, easy way to do it. And if you have less than a million dollars in assets, that's kind of where I say, hey, you could probably get away with a will. You've got to have a will if you have kids and if you're married and all that kind of stuff. Making sure your stuff goes to the right people that you want it to do. In addition, a will is going to also help making sure your children, if you and your spouse both pass away, maybe something tragic happens, then it makes sure that your children go to the people that you want them to go to as legal guardians. So this is going to be something I think is really important. And if you haven't done it yet, I would check it. I mean, trust and will is pretty quick, but also you can talk to attorney and making sure you have that set up in 2025. Every single person needs to at least have a will.

• 38:09Andrew Giancola?

  And depending on your financial situation, you also may need a trust. And that's going to be really, really helpful to kind of go through this process and make sure you have that in place. So think about that for 2025. I'd go into detail, but we do have an entire episode on this. Make sure you check out that episode if you have not about trusts and wills. We go into detail on that episode. Next, we have the 401K. I want you to contribute money to your 401K if you can. Now, this is also your 457 or your 403B or whatever is offered to you. Maybe it's a simple IRA, those types of things, solo 401K. All of these classify into your 401K. But your pre-tax account, your pre-tax account is really powerful because what happens is... You contribute money pre-tax. Then, once your money is in that account,

• 38:54Andrew Giancola?

  you can invest those dollars and can grow. And then, once that money grows and you decide you want to pull that money out after the age of 59 and a half, then you get taxed on that money then. But why these are really powerful and one of the best things to use them for is, A, you get the tax deduction in that year. But B, you also are able to get an employer match. And the employer match, we already talked about. But this allows you to have that employer match and grow your money over time. Like we said, if you make $100,000 per year, you get a 6% employer match. You're going to have 566,000 extra dollars in that account with just a 7% rate of return. And so, I want you to think through that. Also, 401Ks allow you for automatic contributions. They are an automatic way to save your money. How many of you out there have a job? And you signed up for the 401K and you didn't look at it again?

• 39:39Andrew Giancola?

  You just put it in whatever they had you automatically in, which is probably a target date retirement fund, and they started investing your money. And then, three years later, you're like, oh, I forgot about that 401K. Let me go check on that thing. Oh, my gosh, I have $20,000 in this 401K. That's what automation does. Automation allows you forced savings so that you're able to see amazing results just by automating your money. And your 401K is an amazing way to do that. You've got to find ways to find forced savings within your life. It is hard enough for us to hold on to our dollars. We are getting advertised left and right with people just throwing different things at us. You're on social media and people want to get your money. You're watching TV, people want to get your money. You're just thinking about and looking at status symbols within your neighborhood and then people are trying to advertise to you that way.

• 40:23Andrew Giancola?

  There's just so many different ways that we are targeted day in and day out. And so, you've got to find forced savings. A 401K is a way that you can force your savings. Automation is another way to force your savings. Using rounding up apps like Acorns is another way to force your savings. You've got to find forced savings as much as you possibly can. It is really important. The contribution limits in 2025 for the 401K is $23,500. It is up $500 from last year. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to some of the changes in 2025. But that is going to be something that definitely want to make sure that you can think through. Now, if you didn't know this, 401Ks are also Funds, another pro of them is they are protected from creditors. Meaning that if funds or 401k are generally protected from creditors in case of bankruptcy

• 41:08Andrew Giancola?

  or lawsuits, you can actually have that money protected inside of your 401k, which is really cool. And then you can automatically increase those dollars as you start to earn more money. So as you earn more money in your 401k, the amount that you're contributing actually increases because it's based on a percentage of your income. And so you want to try to make sure that you are investing more in that 401k if you can. It just forces you to save. And that's what I love about it. It forces you to save. You get a tax deduction. You can invest the money. It compounds over time. There's some great benefits to a 401k that I absolutely love, and it helps you support your long-term goals. Now Ramsey Solutions, Dave Ramsey's company, did a study and they studied 10,000 millionaires. 78% of those millionaires in that study became millionaires with their 401k. It's all about automation. And it really is the most powerful

• 41:52Andrew Giancola?

  thing that you can utilize is automating your money into investments. Number 21. Now, this is going to be something that by doing this, it actually is going to allow you to make more money in 2025. I want you to take more action and scroll less. Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is there are a lot of people out there that are sitting here right now, and they know their screen time is completely out of control. Meaning that you look at your screen time and you have five, six, seven, eight hours of screen time that you have every single day. And then you complain to yourself that you don't have enough time to work out. You don't have enough time to start a business. You don't have enough time to budget. You don't

• 42:34Andrew Giancola?

  have enough time to save and invest your dollars. But then you look at your phone and you see, you're voting with your time to just scroll aimlessly. This is something that I really want you to focus on in 2025. I am focusing on it in 2025. We all need to be more conscious about how much we are scrolling. Because if you scroll less, imagine how much more time you're going to get back that you can put towards A, wealth building activities, B, spending more time with people that you love, C, picking up new hobbies and doing things that actually bring value to your life. And I'm going to give you some tips and tricks on how I've actually started Really control this late in 2024 and I'm gonna talk about how you can in 2025 because I consciously

• 43:16Andrew Giancola?

  wanted to get better at this every single day. Now, why did I want to get better at this? Specifically, when I need to be working, when I need to be in deep work and I need to be making sure I'm paying attention to what is going on. The last thing I need to be doing is scrolling aimlessly on my phone and not really paying attention to what is going on around me. This is so important for you to understand. I cannot stress this enough. I feel like in the next 50 years, we're gonna be looking back at scrolling like we look at people who smoke cigarettes right now, meaning that it was just so terrible for our health and our brain that we look at it in a different way when all the science comes out about this. Now, you know, every single social media company is trying to get you to pull that slot machine. They want you to keep on scrolling, pull that slot machine, and they treat

• 44:01Andrew Giancola?

  it in a way that makes you get dopamine as you start to scroll on your phone. And what I want you to do is instead, we're gonna block that dopamine any way, shape, or form possible. Now, the first thing I did is I got an app blocker. And the one I use is called Opal. Opal is, I have no affiliation with them, but they are absolutely great so far. And what you can do is you can select different apps that you do not want to be scrolling on, and you can select certain times that you don't want to be scrolling on that app. So for example, during working hours, what I will do is I will have Opal block all social media apps. We have a team who posts social media for us now. So I have Opal who blocks social media apps for me. And in addition, they'll block any other apps that I know are

• 44:42Andrew Giancola?

  distracting. Now, sometimes if you need to unlock a social media app because you gotta do something on there, like for example, for me, I will unlock it sometimes to start to answer some of the comments that come in when they post social media videos. That's part of my job and what I need to be doing. And so when that happens, you can unblock it for five minutes, or 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, and be able to then just go back in, lock back in. And what you're gonna realize is pretty quickly, when you download one of these apps, you're gonna be opening your phone constantly, not even realizing that you're gonna go into social media and start scrolling, whether it's X, whether it's YouTube, I don't care what it is. You know what's distracting for you. Maybe it's Reddit. You need to make sure that you are getting those blocked during certain times that you need to be productive. Now, if it's

• 45:25Andrew Giancola?

  the evening, you know, you're just chilling, you're hanging out, nothing wrong with scrolling around if you've gotten your stuff done for the day. But if you haven't got your stuff done, I want you to take more action. Now, I want you to also think about Time blocking, and I want you to create an action plan every single day. What are the big action items that I need every single day? Because now that you're going to have more time, you need to fill that time with something. And I want it to be income-producing activities, and I want it to be activities that can help you earn more so that you can pursue financial freedom. I guarantee if we all just cut back our screen time in half and took those hours and put them towards things that were going to actually help us achieve financial freedom, we would all be able to do it way, way faster.

• 46:07Andrew Giancola?

  Technology now has advanced so much that you're going to be able to do so many cool things by yourself. You can have solo businesses, and you'll be able to really make huge productive leaps and bounds in the next couple of years. I was just playing with a new tool, for example, called Replet. And Replet can actually literally create you an app by you just utilizing and talking to AI. And it's so cool how all this stuff is going to be advancing in the next couple of years. But making sure that we spend time and do not fall behind by scrolling. Scrolling is going to make you fall behind. I absolutely promise you that. It's going to be bad for your health. It's bad for your brain. And if you do it as much as most people do, you're going to get addicted to it. And if you are addicted to it, I was getting addicted to it.

• 46:48Andrew Giancola?

  And if you are addicted to it, making sure that you block it is a big, big factor. Along those same lines, number 22 is I want you to invest more in your health in 2025. In 2024, what I did was I experimented with a bunch of different things to see what works for me. And I found what works for me, and I've been really hammering away at that, even early here in 2025, where I had the plan set in place. I'm investing more dollars in my health, making sure that my health is looking good. Now, how do you invest more dollars in your health? There's a number of different things you could do. One is I'm spending a lot more time analyzing things like blood work. I get blood work twice a year. I could probably do it quarterly, but right now I'm just doing it twice a year to kind of see where I land. And when I got my first initial results from blood work, there was a lot of things I needed to help fix.

• 47:33Andrew Giancola?

  So there was things that I needed to go in there and adjust, like high blood pressure, those types of things. And so I changed up my supplements. I changed up my diet. I changed up every single thing that I was doing outside of exercise because I exercise a ton. I exercise and lift weights. Six days a week I have a gym. I built a home gym in my house. I play pickleball a lot. And now I'm even running more and stuff like that too. I used to run before. I've run the New York marathon in the past. There's a lot of different, I've done a bunch of triathlons, that kind of stuff. But I'm running again and just trying to bring that into the play, even though pickleball is probably enough cardio for me. And I want you to invest more in your health and your longevity as well. Healthcare is rising at a crazy rate. It is one of the biggest problems that we have in the US and probably even other countries.

• 48:16Andrew Giancola?

  Healthcare is going to cost you a ton of money and you doing your part to reduce that cost right now by investing more in your health is going to be one of the best investments that you can make. Which is why I really classify health as a need, not a want. You need to be, make sure that you're investing more in your health. This means more high quality foods. This is the biggest thing I figured out in 2024 was how to eat in a way that fit for me. So I hired a dietitian. And it was absolutely free through my insurance. It's through this app called Nourish, N-O-U-R-I-S-H. And your insurance will actually pay for this. Most insurance will pay for this. And so mine paid for it. And I hired this dietitian. We started talking through different scenarios and what I need to be doing. It only took me like four or five times to kind of figure out exactly what was going on.

• 48:59Andrew Giancola?

  She educated me on very specific things. I always thought I knew dieting and how to understand diet, but she educated me on very specific things that were very helpful to me. I've always eaten a high protein diet, but now I'm eating a very high protein diet with a lot of lean meats, a lot of steak, a lot of chicken, a lot of fish, a lot of eggs, a lot of actual good fats. A lot of natural carbohydrates. So I'm talking about potatoes. I'm talking about legumes. Those types of things are more so what I eat and cutting out mostly all the breads and the, the rice and that kind of stuff. And that's worked really, really well for me. Now, will I eat bread? Will I eat rice? Sure. I'll eat sourdough sometimes and I'll have rice here and there. That's not a big problem for me. And then a lot of my carbohydrates come from fruits and vegetables too. So fruits are one of the carbohydrates sources that I utilize.

• 49:44Andrew Giancola?

  And all I'm trying to do, this is all to say, all I'm trying to do is eat a lot more whole foods. And this is absolutely changing my life day in and day out. If you start investing in your health with your time, your energy. Energy in your thoughts, I promise you, your life will improve forever. But you have to invest more in your health. I challenge you in 2025 to just do it. Every single year it gets harder. You know, you got the cravings coming up. It gets harder and harder and harder. One big craving for me, and if this is not helpful, sorry, but I'm just talking about health here. But one big craving for me is sugar. I love myself a Sour Patch Kid, okay? And so I'm the guy who likes sour candy, even though I'm a mid 30s guy who likes sour candy. Whatever, you know, I don't reach for the cake or the cookies. I reach for the sour candy.

• 50:28Andrew Giancola?

  If it's in my house, I'll eat the whole thing. And I've curbed that really easily by just changing up my diet, eating more fruit in the evenings, at the time when I used to want to grab the sour candy. And so there's things like that you could just kind of shape and shift. Nourish is a great, honestly, a great resource. I cannot say enough good things about at least my experience there. And it was something that really, really was great for me. And when you invest more in your health, it's going to boost your productivity. It's going to enhance your quality of life. It is going to help you actually prepare for healthcare costs. It's either something where your body is going to wear down. It's going to be because of you over time. But if you do everything in your power to make sure that your body is in tip top shape, you're going to spend way less on healthcare than someone who does not take care of their body. So it sets a positive example for your family, your friends, all that kind of stuff.

• 51:13Andrew Giancola?

  So just making sure you're investing more in healthcare in 2025 can be really, really important. Number 23 is to get updated on all the 2025 changes. So there are a lot of them, and we've talked about them in an episode late in 2024. But some of them are things like your 401k contributions, Rose, where you could increase them now another $500 a year from $23,000 in 2024 to $23,500 in 2025. The catch up contribution is the same. And then if you're between ages 60 to 63, you're eligible to contribute the greater of $10,000 or 150% of the catch up amount, resulting in a limit of $11,250 for 2025.

• 51:53Andrew Giancola?

  Also, for IRAs, they did not change. So it's still $7,000 to max out the IRAs. For simple retirement accounts, that also remains at $17,600. And for catch up contributions, that's also still $3,000. 500 for simple retirement accounts. There's a lot of tax changes, so the standard deduction has increased to 15,000 for single filers. It's 30,000 for married filing jointly and it's 22.5 for heads of household. And tax brackets have adjusted some. Uh, new income tax credits have adjusted estate and gift tax exemptions have adjusted. So making sure you kind of get up to date on all this stuff is really, really important. Our episode kind of goes through all of this so that you can have the details. Definitely make sure that you just get up to date on so you can make your own adjustments in your own personal finances.

• 52:37Andrew Giancola?

  That's one thing you need to be doing every year is knowing what those adjustments are going to be specifically with retirement accounts and taxes. And then make sure you talk to your CPA about some of this stuff too, to stay informed. Number 24 is if you are the type of person who is a big scroller and you got that screen time that's five, six, seven hours a day. And you don't know what to do with your time right away. I want you to increase your connections, your real connections with people. Now, your network is your net worth. This is something that may be a cheesy saying, but it's also very, very true. And I want you in 2025 to increase your network. This is one of the things that I have a goal for in 2025. I am in a new industry in some of my businesses.

• 53:19Andrew Giancola?

  I have no network in that industry and I need to make sure I increase that network in that industry. And so there's a bunch of things that you can do is one, you can leverage social media platforms to kind of have conversations with people in that network. You can use LinkedIn, you can use Twitter. There is a bunch of different industry specific platforms that can help you collaborate. Those first two are good for collaboration, um, but there are other, I mean, you could use Instagram and TikTok probably if you wanted to, uh, to try to figure that out. Two is attend networking events. So you can do this by going to conferences, you can go to seminars, you can go to workshops. But attend networking events so that you are able to start to meet more people that are in the same industry with the same interests. Three is join professional organizations.

• 53:59Andrew Giancola?

  So if you really don't know where to start, there are member organizations out there that you can start to join and learn and meet other people there. You can also volunteer or serve on committees. Um, that's a great way to meet people and really kind of engage in the community. If you have, you know, a committee at your church. If you have a committee at your local Chamber of Commerce, if you have a committee, you know, there's different things that you could do to really start to help you network. Now, as you start to expand your circle, one thing I want you to do is do this in a way where you can help other people, because if you're really helpful to other people, and all your entire goal is just to give, give, give, give, give, this is going to really help you in the long run when you need to ask for something. So say, for example, you are in an industry and in that industry, you know, right now,

• 54:44Andrew Giancola?

  you're not looking for a job, you enjoy the job that you're at, and so you're just looking to help people, you're trying to connect different people in that industry who are looking for specific things. Say, for example, your friend is looking for a new job, and you know somebody who is in that industry, you connect to those two, they're going to be forever grateful for you for making that connection, especially if they land that job. But you just start to do things to help other people. If somebody is working on a problem, and they don't know how to solve that problem, you know how to solve that problem, help them solve that problem for free, and they're going to remember that forever, and they're going to be able to help you in times of need when you need help. And I want you to kind of think through, how can I serve more people? Now, it's not with the intent of getting something back, it's being genuine about this and making sure that if you serve more people, you'll be able to get all of that back.

• 55:27Andrew Giancola?

  So try to network as much as possible, host meetups, host events if you can, if there's no meetups for you, follow up with people consistently. There is an episode that we did with Jordan Harbinger, if you haven't heard that episode, he talks about how he networks, and it is honestly one of my favorite interviews we did, I think it was the first interview, it was either the first or the second interview I'd ever did on this podcast, and it's still one of my favorites because he's just a pro at podcasting, but he talks about how to network and how to network really well. So that's another great one that you can definitely look at. And then number 25, the last one of this episode, this two-parter, and I know this is a long one, but number 25 is follow the steps in the 136 method. If you do not have an emergency fund yet, then you need to look into our 136 method,

• 56:11Andrew Giancola?

  the way that it works, and we have an entire episode on this that I want you to listen to, if you do not have an emergency fund, this is building your financial baseline, is you want to save up one month expenses first, then pay off high interest debt, then save up three months expenses, then you can start Investing and then I want you to save six months expenses in a high yield savings account so that you can protect yourself against anything in life. And the 136 method is by far my favorite thing that we talked about in 2024 because it helps so many different people just clarify their financial foundation and have clarity on the steps they need to be taking. And so if you can, please follow the 136 method, take action on that in 2025. If you don't have an emergency fund yet, you've got to have one. Our minimum goal is six

• 56:56Andrew Giancola?

  months in emergency fund and the 136 method explains that exactly. So if you haven't heard that, just type in 136 method, personal finance podcast, it will pop up. It was actually our most popular YouTube video last year, I think, for the podcast. And it was one that I think can really, really help you. Again, thank you guys so much for being here. We are so excited for what 2025 is going to bring for each and every single one of you. I have some amazing content planned for you. We're working really hard on this content. So really, really excited for you guys to be here. If you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe to this podcast, leave a five star rating and review if you have not, and share this with a friend. Share this with as many friends as you can who know can get value out of building wealth over time. Thank you again so much for being here and we will see you on the next episode.

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